Monday, December 21, 2009

Authenticity!

You know, despite our die-hard attachment to Blood, I have not played the game in a very long time.

That's right. I could not play Blood because of hardware issues. I relied on both my team members and memory to guide the way.

Tonight, I was lucky enough to receive a very old laptop, Pentium 2MMX era, and what I witnessed when I loaded up Blood just dropped my jaw.

Literally, I was floored.

Blood is an amazing game. Everything about it was just spot on. The atmosphere, the action, the mood. I was worried, for a very long time, that Hypertension was unable to capture the atmosphere. Literally, I would get worried sick for hours on end about it. My team members assured me that [Hypertension] was spot on. They tried telling me that Hypertension captured, and more, Blood in almost every single way.

LEFT: BLOOD RIGHT: HYPERTENSION(Click for larger version!)

Well, I took a trip down memory lane. I played Blood for hours after work. Afterwards, very anxious, I loaded up Hypertension on my main machine.

Simply amazing.

Not only does Hypertension capture this spirit from Blood, everything from the atmosphere, the action, the mood, and the intensity is all there!! I was running Blood in SuperVGA mode and it looked great, but drab (like it should). I was complaining to my team that Hypertension looked drab as well, like nothing fit in the engine we were using.

Something clicked about half an hour ago. Going from Blood to Hypertension is like going from RC Cola to Pepsi. I mean no disrespect towards Blood's followers or the community when I say this, but it was a major, major upgrade. The OpenGL renderer I was so worried about fit the game incredibly well, taking Blood's grain and turning it into silk. The colors are more vivid in Hypertension because of this. The lighting adds a lot to the game, but I thought Blood was a darker game than what I remembered it to be. So it's not that much of a problem.

Yeah, there are a lot of things in Hypertension that need tweaking, but for the most part, it's a really spot on rendition of the original. I just wanted to share that with you all. For those of you who are worried that we won't capture the atmosphere, hopefully we'll be able to prove you wrong (for the most part). =)

The only thing that I can say Hypertension doesn't quite get right is Blood's software diminished lighting, but it's a trade off for Hypertension's dynamic lighting, and it works well in comparison.

Had to rant! Talk to you guys later, enjoy the updates, and check the forums!